Britain’s paranoid right-wing press is provoking a climate of terror of Romanians and Bulgarians using arguments which are based on lies.
The purpose seems to be to force a divide between the British people and the European Union and to encourage the UK’s Conservative-led Government to break EU legislation allowing Romanians and Bulgarians to work freely in the UK from 2014.
This strategy is in parallel with the agenda of Britain’s UK Independence Party, a far right protest party, whose candidates favour the country’s exit from the EU and an end to immigration to the UK.
Below are five tactics that the UK press uses to create fear of Romania and Bulgaria. Together this resembles a coordinated strategy to target these two countries as part of a wide-scale agenda to eject Britain from the EU.

First lie: Romanians and Bulgarians will invade Britain

The right-wing British press believes that an immigration boom of Romanians and Bulgarians to the UK is inevitable when the changes will come into affect in 2014 allowing free movement of workers’ rights for citizens of the two countries.
Bestselling tabloid The Sun states:
“A TIDAL wave of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants is threatening to swamp Britain — and flood our overstretched jobs market.”
The proof? The journalist talks to a couple of Romanians waiting for a bus in London, one of whom says: ‘The UK is much better than Romania. All my mates will come in 2014’.
Assuming that this man does not have millions of Facebook ‘friends’ poised to start working on 1 January 2014 across the islands, we can safely argue that this does not count as evidence.
Meanwhile the world’s most popular news website – The Daily Mail – uses ‘expert’ views to bolster its claims -
“Experts warn of a ‘significant spike’ [of migrants to the UK] when limitations imposed by the EU are lifted at the end of next year. Numbers are expected to be higher than when restriction was lifted for Poland in 2004.”
However this ‘expert’ opinion comes from Migration Watch, an NGO with an agenda to reduce immigration into the UK. Migration Watch may be a respectable organisation, but it is not an independent voice.

Second lie: Tens of millions of Romanians and Bulgarians will swarm to Britain

Once the media has established that this immigration boom is inevitable, it shocks readers with exaggerated numbers.
The Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Express quote the risk of “29 million” Romanians and Bulgarians flooding Britain – the total number of these nations’ citizens.
Trevor Kavanagh, a veteran Eurosceptic commentator, states in The Sun:
“An EU law means that from 2014, more than 29 million people from the two countries will be entitled to apply for any UK job.”
Alex Gore in the Daily Mail backs him up, but raises the figure:
“British jobs could be at risk when nearly 30 million Bulgarians and Romanians gain the right to live and work unrestricted in the UK from 2014.”
With these numbers, Kavanagh and Gore imply that every single child, baby and pensioner at the threshold of death from these countries are dropping their CVs into Google Translate so they can apply to be a barista in Newcastle, Sheffield or Cardiff.

Third lie: 30 million Romanian and Bulgarian criminals will invade Britain

Once we know how many Romanians and Bulgarians will arrive in the UK (30 million), the British press reveals who these people are – pickpockets, pimps and assassins.
The Sun’s Kavanagh uses a smart turn of phrase to imply a lie, which he does not directly state:
“Tens of thousands [of Romanians and Bulgarians] have already settled in Britain. They run vice gangs and operate Fagin-style begging rings whose children bring in huge sums from soft-hearted Brits.”
With this sequence of phrases, Kavanagh implies that tens of thousands – all of the Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK – are selling whores and stealing purses.
He defames every migrant of two whole nations – a total of 140,000 people – as petty thieves living off prostitutes.
Suddenly Kavanagh switches to becoming an expert on southeast European politics – calling Romania and Bulgaria a “murderous regime” and states that in Romania: “Gangland executions are daily events.”
You heard it here first. Gangland. Executions. Are. Daily. Events. In. Romania.
It must be true. The Sun said it.

Britons are not all racist. But many of them are. When they realise it is not acceptable to be racist about a particular race, due to the fashions of the day, they switch their contempt to another.
These tend to shift between who the right-wing press believes are ‘good migrants’ and who are ‘bad migrants’.
In the 1980s the Irish were branded as “terrorists” and “drunks”, in the 1990s, the Afro-Caribbeans as “drug-dealers” and “skivers”, while in the 2000s this shifted to Pakistanis who were branded as “suicide-bombers” and “woman-hating”.
Now Romanians are the new bad migrant.
Lacking a terrorist angle, reporters trawl the web for any evidence of a Romanian saying something nasty as proof that it is acceptable for Britain’s ‘good migrants’ to hate them.
Here is a lead from the Daily Express:
“ROMANIANS preparing to swamp Britain next year are insulting British towns and cities and making racist comments about fellow immigrants on the internet.”
The newspaper finds anonymous quotes from Romanians who tell other Romanians to avoid London because it is “full of Pakistanis”. Someone called ‘Mutu’ writing on the site advises his fellow citizens to avoid the town of Slough in Berkshire because it has a “high concentration” of “pickaninny” (a derogatory term for black children).
In colonial times, this was called divide and conquer. It was how the Brits took over the world. Its military forced one race to fight against another, while its generals sat on their horses, sparked up their pipes, sipped on Gins and Tonic and laughed at the idiot foreigners. After mislaying their empire, Brits have now decided to play this game at home.

Fifth lie: 30 million sick Romanians and Bulgarians will invade British hospitals

A big fear of the British is that all the migrants from Romania and Bulgaria are sick and will exploit Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) for free healthcare.
The anti-immigration Daily Mail states:
“Earlier this year an investigation by Pulse magazine estimated that over the past three years health tourists had been given free hospital treatment worth £40 million.”
This means just over £13 million a year from an NHS budget of £103.4 billion. Thus “health tourists” – of which Romanians and Bulgarians could only be a part – waste 0.012 per cent of the NHS’s budget. This is not a disaster for the Britain.
Romanians and Bulgarians are not among the top 20 migrant nations using the NHS. The majority of these two countries’ migrants are young, healthy and entrepreneurial – as most migrants are the world over.
They are not cancerous paraplegics stricken with the bubonic plague desperate for the attentions of a plump, red-faced English matron.

When I was working in a bank in the UK 20 years ago, a girl employed there often attacked the ‘invasion’ of immigrants to the UK. She had two arguments. Her first was that they come over to “steal our unemployment benefits”. Her second argument was that they come over to “steal our jobs”.
In The Sun, Trevor Kavanagh says that Romanians are seen as “skivers” – but if they “are seen” as “skivers” why do they continually find employment in the UK?
So are Romanians and Bulgarians stealing British jobs or stealing British benefits?
Are they working hard or are they sick? In every argument against immigration there is a paradox and in every paradox there is a lie.
Rather than create well-balanced stories reflecting the truth of a situation, these papers have a narrative. One of those narratives is the Racist Narrative. Any culture which can be safely attacked with an appearance of a justification will fit into that narrative. Today, it is Romania and Bulgaria.

what I find even more funny:
brits are afraid of max 50.000 romanian and bulgarians that MIGHT come / year.
in the mean time, UK is GIVING (for sure) 300.000 visas / year just for indian citizens.
schizophrenia?

In Romania there are 23 milion people living this includes elder people and childrens from 1 day to 18 years. In Bulgaria there are like 6-7 milion people.
And yes there are all kind of people but what country doesn’t have all their kind of people?

Well, if everyone is moving to UK, there will be plenty of space summing the territories of Romania and Bulgaria (since 30 millions of those two will go to UK, nobody will remain home, and then some) and some 20 million englishmen can move here.

It would also be nice to look at the number of British residents in Romania (and Bulgaria), compare the average income they make in these countries vs. the national averages, the benefits and rights they have enjoyed over the last 10 years…

It’s a pitty to see such a rethoric in a country which was one of our best political supporters in the Accession process, a country whose ambasador at the time, His Excellency Mr. Quinton Quayle, was one of the moste beloved representatives of a foreign country in Romania – of all times.

What happens in UK is sad, really sad. It’s almost as sad as what it happens in Romania.

To some degree, this kind of xenofobia is understandable. I would also say it is quite harmless relative to other kinds of xenofobia out there. These are emotional reactions based on poor arguments coming from people who are confused, but not necessarily bad in any way. Attitudes like the one your colleague from 20 years ago show confusion around essential issues rather than a bitter hatered of foreigners.

I would say such reactions are not extraordinary. Not everybody is better off as a result of more competition in the job market, and it’s understandable that a lot of people will look for ways to keep it from happening. And the increase in crime is there too. Nowhere close to what the papers portray it to be, but it’s there.

Can we really be upset with some of the Brits for having such an attitude towards Romanians and Bulgarians? I am not sure. In a moral sense we can’t really expect others to do more than we would be able to do ourselves if we were in their situation. We’re all humans. If somehow we were the Brits and you were the Romanians, we’d probably be quite racist too. The fact that we are not in the same position doesn’t automatically make anybody better.

There is another kind of racism that I find a lot scarier. It’s when very bright and highly educated people get into the game and start making sharp, elaborate arguments about things like racial superiority, and start advocating “solutions” based on those arguments. Such people are still around. You don’t get to see them in mainstream media, thank goodness. It must be thanks to the decent people who keep them out. But when you do read what they have to say, it sure is scary – a lot scarier than anything the tabloids cane come up with. As long as education still brings decency and respect towards one another, I’d say things are not that bad overall.

It’s a good text, but there is one slight nuance I’d like to point out- I’m quite sure Romanians and Britons are more or less of the same race, so what we deal with here is not so much racism, but chauvinism. The problem with chauvinism of course is that it’s not as blatantly wrong as racism, so I guess it might persist for longer and gain more traction even among more moderate members of the public. That being said, I’m quite hopeful that things will cool off in the end, once it becomes clear that the Romanian hordes are staying home.

What always makes me laugh is the hypocrisy of the language used in the UK: those who go and live in England are always ‘immigrants’ while the English who do exactly the same (go and live abroad) are always described as ‘expats.’ No, we are all economic migrants.

There’s no room for us. They already filled their country with Indians and Pakistanis. A large part of social assistance state support is spent with them.
If I remember well, there was a similar campaign early 2007 after Romania joined EU.
Did Romanians invade UK? The polish did. They invade Scotland.

I lived in UK and in France – for the majority of Romanians, one must be hit in the head to choose the first over the other or over any latin culture country.

There are differences in culture, climate, cuisine and a class system that perpetuates the “metec” status. All these make the transition very hard. For a chance to succeed (keep in mind – we all have a different idea about success), if one speaks only English, Canada, Australia and USA are a better bet (I have no info about Ireland-Eire – which would be the closest English speaking country).
Of course, if you only want to live in a country that treats its residents decently, UK is as fine as any European country

I forgot to mention but I read a comment and this prompted the thought

- if one is racist and xenophobe – maybe they should choose some remote villages to steal British work. London is full of people coming from countries who were part of the British Empire or are now part of UK -

I can see that not a single one comment here would hit the nail in the head: when communism was broken in 1989 the first hoards leaving Romania and Bulgaria were gypsies and criminals. Intellectuals and hard workers arrived after. Just to find that first wrong impression about “Romanians” have been already set up within the locals (English, German, French and so on) due to those “swans’ eaters”.
The communism loyalists who had been in control before 89 , were controlling after 89 and are controlling now Romania have applied very well the “burned and poisoned” land politics taught at Moscow Communist Center.
Despite those facts hard workers and intellectuals were working hard doubling their efforts to make a settlement and change their lives for better in their new dreamland.
But THOSE LOYALISTS never gave up. Their offspring are leading Romania now and continuing same bad politics: “mess up “ and keep lying the West about corruption and hidden communist agenda. How long , home , in Romania , the people still alive would not wake up and adjust their votes to cut off the power of the dirty politicians , so long the “ Romanian” name will be humiliated.
Romanians from Romania wake up and defy the crocks who are leading you. Fill the jails with their fat bodies and support as your leaders those few patriots and smart and honest people who are still on Romania!!!

I thoroughly agree with the ideas in the article. I’d like to add a few remarks with regards to the healthcare professionals working in the UK.
Not many people know but quite close to 40% of the medical doctors working in the UK (36.68% to be precise) qualified abroad (outside the UK I mean). It is difficult to tell how many of these people are foreign nationals or British citizens having studied abroad. For practical purposes, I do not think that we would be too wrong to assume that the large majority of these people are foreign nationals. The mere fact that approximately 3.5 out of 10 medical doctors in the UK are likely to be foreigners, to me shows a large dependence of the UK National Health System on foreign doctors. My feedback from peer medical colleagues is that the quality of life of the medical doctors living and working in the UK continues to deteriorate because of excessive regulation, politically appointed management, excessive population expectations, excessive power given to nursing staff over doctors only to name a few perceived problems. I would also like to add that out of the 100% of the medical professionals qualified abroad, Romanian qualified physicians represent aprox. 0.8% – SAME as Poland. I should also add that if one considers absolute figures rather than percentages there are more Romanian doctors (1996) compared to Polish doctors (1932). In fact, I have signals that many Polish doctors now consider returning to their home country. At the same time, quite a few UK qualified doctors continue to take long journeys to Australia and New Zeeland…
Here is the source of my data:http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/register/search_stats.asp
So why have I included all this information? I wanted to provide a context for the following statement: we live times with unique challenges and I believe that the politicians in Romania as well as in the UK currently do not meet these challenges. Furthermore, on one hand, I do not think that the UK was ever so dependent on foreign citizens to run ESSENTIAL services and that Romania on the other hand has never experienced such a BRAIN DRAIN – nor have the two countries ever been so economically linked. The popularity of the anti-EU speech in both countries in this context is deeply concerning. It is my impression that the popularity of the populist speech is at least partially due to the politicians from both countries currently failing due to them being stuck in “old ways” of practicising politics – except maybe for Michael Harris who seems to be doing a good job at keeping calm and professional.
@ Author
I am sorry to say but I see serious flaws in the the way media is regulated (e.g. I could never get a comment in Daily Mail, The Sun or Ciutacu’s Blog – they simply don’t publish comments challenging the content of their materials).
Michael, I regard your your article as fair and bold. I am wondering if this is something that you published or are willing to publish in the UK media. If you did, please provide us with a link – I am sure that many of us would find reading the comments very interesting.

Romanian worker give for UK new taxes for buget if force worker young qualificate come intro market worker UK . Exist 1.500.000 peoples romanian into Italy,600000 Spain ,250000 England ,100 000 Germany.Into year 101 B.C emperor impire roman Traian attack DACIA in south dunabe use celts and welsh and take three gentaile dacians warrior for Scotland . Of 1january 2014 possible come other 100 000 workers romanians but no 1million or 2million for that population country are old age and young age emigrate into Italy and Spain. Today economics romanian rise and exist wage of 1000Euro /mounth here and 1bred cost 0.5Euro.England don`t fear for invade for that are politics and speak and don`t facts .In year 600B.C south Romanian had name Vallachia -Walachia -Welsh .UK if desire young peoples clever for university ,romania have good peoples what know mathematics , fizics ,good peoples in IT , country France take 9000 workers peoples with study superior in medicine of Romania and France become a strong country on parth medicine and beneficiate peoples france for good service. Inside UE exist good things and all country power must take for that country power England Italy Germany are in competitor for first place,don`t take you -take other.When you come in market and see with your eyes a good horse take for that are a market free . Open mind don`t cover mind with ideeas old of 1800year ,today discuss into world global